The 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand will be confirmed as a 20-team tournament at the end of this week when the IRB's council meets in Woking, England.
After spending all week in discussions over the "integrated" global rugby season with an historic gathering of the game's key stake-holders, the IRB bigwigs will finally hit decision mode on Saturday when they get together to decide on the tournament format for 2011.
There had been some strong support prior to this year's tournament in France for reducing the number of teams taking part from 20 to 16.
New Zealand officials, in particular, had been keen on the idea as a way to avoid the pool mismatches that the All Blacks had to contend with in France where they emerged from their group unchallenged, only to be tipped up at the first knockout hurdle.
However, the overall success of the French tournament, the competitiveness of the so-called weaker nations such as Tonga and Georgia and the flavour added by the likes of Portugal have conspired to create almost unanimous support for the retention of the 20-team format.
A non-binding decision had actually been taken earlier this year to reduce the number of teams to 16, which would also have helped the logistics of staging the event in New Zealand. But that will be overturned when the vote takes place at the weekend.
It is to be hoped that the IRB will revisit its seeding system at the same time.
At present teams are seeded for World Cups based on their finishing position at the previous tournament four years earlier. There is widespread support for a fairer system to be introduced that takes into account more current form.
The IRB's world rankings could be the best determination, though the main question there is over when the cutoff point would be to allow for the draw to be made.
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